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+What: /dev/kmsg
+Date: Mai 2012
+KernelVersion: 3.5
+Contact: Kay Sievers <kay@vrfy.org>
+Description: The /dev/kmsg character device node provides userspace access
+ to the kernel's printk buffer.
+
+ Injecting messages:
+
+ Every write() to the opened device node places a log entry in
+ the kernel's printk buffer.
+
+ The logged line can be prefixed with a <N> syslog prefix, which
+ carries the syslog priority and facility. The single decimal
+ prefix number is composed of the 3 lowest bits being the syslog
+ priority and the next 8 bits the syslog facility number.
+
+ If no prefix is given, the priority number is the default kernel
+ log priority and the facility number is set to LOG_USER (1). It
+ is not possible to inject messages from userspace with the
+ facility number LOG_KERN (0), to make sure that the origin of
+ the messages can always be reliably determined.
+
+ Accessing the buffer:
+
+ Every read() from the opened device node receives one record
+ of the kernel's printk buffer.
+
+ The first read() directly following an open() always returns
+ first message in the buffer; there is no kernel-internal
+ persistent state; many readers can concurrently open the device
+ and read from it, without affecting other readers.
+
+ Every read() will receive the next available record. If no more
+ records are available read() will block, or if O_NONBLOCK is
+ used -EAGAIN returned.
+
+ Messages in the record ring buffer get overwritten as whole,
+ there are never partial messages received by read().
+
+ In case messages get overwritten in the circular buffer while
+ the device is kept open, the next read() will return -EPIPE,
+ and the seek position be updated to the next available record.
+ Subsequent reads() will return available records again.
+
+ Unlike the classic syslog() interface, the 64 bit record
+ sequence numbers allow to calculate the amount of lost
+ messages, in case the buffer gets overwritten. And they allow
+ to reconnect to the buffer and reconstruct the read position
+ if needed, without limiting the interface to a single reader.
+
+ The device supports seek with the following parameters:
+
+ SEEK_SET, 0
+ seek to the first entry in the buffer
+ SEEK_END, 0
+ seek after the last entry in the buffer
+ SEEK_DATA, 0
+ seek after the last record available at the time
+ the last SYSLOG_ACTION_CLEAR was issued.
+
+ Other seek operations or offsets are not supported because of
+ the special behavior this device has. The device allows to read
+ or write only whole variable length messages (records) that are
+ stored in a ring buffer.
+
+ Because of the non-standard behavior also the error values are
+ non-standard. -ESPIPE is returned for non-zero offset. -EINVAL
+ is returned for other operations, e.g. SEEK_CUR. This behavior
+ and values are historical and could not be modified without the
+ risk of breaking userspace.
+
+ The output format consists of a prefix carrying the syslog
+ prefix including priority and facility, the 64 bit message
+ sequence number and the monotonic timestamp in microseconds,
+ and a flag field. All fields are separated by a ','.
+
+ Future extensions might add more comma separated values before
+ the terminating ';'. Unknown fields and values should be
+ gracefully ignored.
+
+ The human readable text string starts directly after the ';'
+ and is terminated by a '\n'. Untrusted values derived from
+ hardware or other facilities are printed, therefore
+ all non-printable characters and '\' itself in the log message
+ are escaped by "\x00" C-style hex encoding.
+
+ A line starting with ' ', is a continuation line, adding
+ key/value pairs to the log message, which provide the machine
+ readable context of the message, for reliable processing in
+ userspace.
+
+ Example::
+
+ 7,160,424069,-;pci_root PNP0A03:00: host bridge window [io 0x0000-0x0cf7] (ignored)
+ SUBSYSTEM=acpi
+ DEVICE=+acpi:PNP0A03:00
+ 6,339,5140900,-;NET: Registered protocol family 10
+ 30,340,5690716,-;udevd[80]: starting version 181
+
+ The DEVICE= key uniquely identifies devices the following way:
+
+ ============ =================
+ b12:8 block dev_t
+ c127:3 char dev_t
+ n8 netdev ifindex
+ +sound:card0 subsystem:devname
+ ============ =================
+
+ The flags field carries '-' by default. A 'c' indicates a
+ fragment of a line. Note, that these hints about continuation
+ lines are not necessarily correct, and the stream could be
+ interleaved with unrelated messages, but merging the lines in
+ the output usually produces better human readable results. A
+ similar logic is used internally when messages are printed to
+ the console, /proc/kmsg or the syslog() syscall.
+
+ By default, kernel tries to avoid fragments by concatenating
+ when it can and fragments are rare; however, when extended
+ console support is enabled, the in-kernel concatenation is
+ disabled and /dev/kmsg output will contain more fragments. If
+ the log consumer performs concatenation, the end result
+ should be the same. In the future, the in-kernel concatenation
+ may be removed entirely and /dev/kmsg users are recommended to
+ implement fragment handling.
+
+Users: dmesg(1), userspace kernel log consumers